What is a hung parliament?

What happens if no party wins the election? Who will be the prime minister?
When will we get the next government?

By Asa Bennett and James Kirkup

3:23PM BST 07 May 2015

On Friday, the day after the election, voters are almost certain to wake up to a hung parliament. That means no party has won enough seats to have a majority in the House of Commons.

It also means lots of questions about what happens next. Here are some answers.

If no one gets a majority at the election on Thursday, who will be prime minister on Friday?

David Cameron. In a hung parliament, the incumbent prime minister stays in office -- and lives in Downing Street -- until it is decided who will attempt to form a new government.

How is that decided?

According to the Cabinet Manual, the closet thing Britain has to a rulebook here, the incumbent PM is entitled to attempt to form a government then stay in office until Parliament meets, when he can ask MPs to approve his Queen’s Speech. Parliament meets again on May 27.

So Mr Cameron is PM for three more weeks, come what may?

Not quite. The Cabinet Manual also says that an incumbent government “is expected to resign if it becomes clear that it is unlikely to be able to command that confidence and there is a clear alternative.” That could allow Labour to argue that Mr Cameron should quit before May 27 if there is clearly an “anti-Tory” majority in the Commons that would inevitably reject his Queen’s Speech and support Ed Miliband as PM.

What would happen if Mr Cameron resigned?

Mr Miliband would then have the chance to form a government which would put its Queen’s Speech to the Commons on May 27, to see if he could win the support of a majority of MPs.

Does a hung parliament mean another coalition government?

Not necessarily. A majority coalition is a formal agreement between two or more parties who between them have more than 323 MPs. All the parties then get to provide ministers in the government. The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition of 2010 - 2015 is an example.

But there are other options. A new prime minister could decide not to seek a coalition with any other party and instead rely on a confidence-and-supply deal with smaller allies. That means the smaller parties would support the government on financial matters like the Budget, and in confidence votes which would otherwise bring the government down. The smaller parties wouldn't get ministerial jobs, but they would expect concessions on their chosen policies.

There's also the option of a minority coalition, where the governing party makes a formal agreement with a smaller party but together they still don't have a majority, meaning they have to seek support in the Commons for every vote. Some Labour figures think their party might seek such a deal with the Lib Dems this time.

Finally, a party that lacks a majority could simply try to go it alone and govern as a minority government, vulnerable to being voted down at any time and trying to win the support of other parties on an ad hoc basis for every vote. Minority governments rarely last long.

That all sounds complicated. How long will it take to sort it all out?

In 2010, the Conservatives and Lib Dems agreed their coalition in five days, largely because they were worried that financial markets would panic if Britain did not form a new government quickly. But everyone involved now agrees that was too quick, meaning some important decisions were botched. Any such talks this year could take much longer.

And any talking might have to wait a little while after the election.

David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg will not get much rest once polls close at 10pm on May 7, as official business beckons. The party leaders – if any of them haven’t resigned or been deposed overnight – will have to travel to the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Friday morning for the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of VE Day.

Would they be here while coalition talks go on?

Given the solemnity of the event, the leaders may well decide to leave the horse-trading and wrangling until later.

They may also still be waiting for the final election results. In 2010, results for the seat of Devon West & Torridge didn’t come in until 4.15pm the day after the election. This time, other battleground seats likely to wait as long to give their official results: Warwick & Leamington, a key marginal, probably won't report until noon on Friday. St Ives, a Tory target, may come after 1pm. In a close election, even the results from single seats could be decisive.

Could Mr Miliband be PM even if Labour wasn’t the biggest party in the Commons?

Technically, yes. A prime minister simply has to command the confidence of the Commons: the size of his own party is constitutionally (if not politically) irrelevant. The first Labour prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, took office in 1924 even though Labour had fewer seats than the Conservatives and relying on the tacit support of the Liberals.

Would that be sustainable?

Quite possibly not. Prime Minister Miliband would be vulnerable to being brought down by a combination of Conservative and SNP votes. MacDonald’s government lasted only ten months before collapsing. Baldwin’s Conservatives won the October 1924 election handsomely.

Could we have a second election soon then?

It’s much less likely than it was in Baldwin’s day. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act, passed in 2011, means that if a government loses a confidence vote, alternative prime ministers get a 14-day period in which to form their own government. Only if a second confidence vote is lost is an early election held. Otherwise, the next election will come in May 2020.